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Wednesday, October 11 2017
Building strong legs and glutes

Best Way to Build Strong Legs and Glutes

Legs and glutes are a very important category when it comes to women’s fitness. Having strong and shapely legs is important for both men and women but when it comes to a woman, strong legs could significantly improve their physique. You must work your legs and glutes at least once or sometimes twice a week. Many fear the pain that typical leg day gives and hence skip them, but over a period you will realize that all the pain is definitely worth it. Before you kick start your weight loss and toning journey with the following exercises, make sure to stretch. Doing proper stretches can help you prepare your muscles for the workout, and prevent injuries.

Squats:

Start with body weight squats. Squats are the backbone of leg workouts. When you squat regularly, you are engaging your glutes which will in turn give you that amazing lower body shape. However, you need to start simple. The idea is to make sure that you do your variation right without paying too much attention to the weights. Many people tend to squat shallow, but the goal is to get their booty parallel to their knees. This puts strain on your quads, and will really engage your glute muscles.

Hamstring curls:

Leg curl can be performed on a prone or standing leg curl machine. It’s very important not to skip hamstrings on leg day. I do not recommend the popular exercise stiff leg deadlifts. When performing any exercise it’s important to move through a full range of motion. Stiff leg dead lifts do not move though any range of motion. More or it less just hyperextends the muscle causing soreness the next day. This is often confused as a good exercise, but in reality it puts the knee and hamstring muscle in a dangerous movement.  

Deadlifts:

Stand with your deadlifts with your feet shoulder width. It’s important to always have your head in a natural position, or look up slightly. Avoid looking down when performing this exercise or you will put unwanted strain on your lower back. Deadlifts are a very effective exercise, but can be dangerous if done wrong. With the guidance of one of our personal trainers in Jacksonville this exercise can add great benefits to your leg day.

Lunges:

Lunges are a must for developing strong glutes and thighs. There are many variations, and important to change them often. When performing lunges be careful to lower your back knee almost all the way to the ground. This exercise should be performed in a slow controlled motion. Make sure you do not let you front knee to pass over your toe.

Posted by: Brandon AT 06:53 am   |  Permalink   |  Email
Wednesday, October 04 2017
The down side to a vegan diet

A common trend in nutrition plans for women’s fitness and weight loss is the use of vegan meal plans. While they are easy to make and supply vitamins and minerals they do not always come up with the best benefits. Apart from that a vegan diet does not add any special benefit to muscle training and high intensity workouts. Here’s why:

Protein Deficiency

Chicken, turkey and other meats are excellent sources of protein. Every individual who works out and wants to witness good gains ultimately consumes proteins in huge quantities starting with egg whites. The vegan alternatives for protein sources such as tofu and beans etc. are not as protein loaded as meat is. The downside is that you will have to consume large quantities of nuts or tofu to pack the same protein content of a roast chicken breast. This immense difference in protein levels diminishes the muscle pump you get after an intense workout and stunts muscle growth to a certain extent.

Vitamin and Mineral Deficiency

Studies have shown that following a vegan diet causes vitamin and mineral deficiency in many individuals. While the concept behind a vegan diet is to be natural and eat green, the very change from a regular balanced diet to a completely organic one creates a depletion of certain minerals in your body. This particularly applies to hardcore non vegetarians who have opted for the vegan way because any and every source of energy that they obtained from meat is now out of the equation. And to compensate for that, the only way is to make sure they consume more quantities of food to increase the vitamin and mineral intake. However, this results in consumption of additional calories.

Eating out

When you follow a vegan diet, it becomes increasingly hard to eat out. Despite many restaurants being vegan friendly, the quest does not come handy all the time. For example, what if you are at a party and all the snacks you have are not vegan friendly?

Options for vegans is very limited when it comes to restaurants and there have been many cases where a fellow vegan had to starve for a while because of a lack of better option. And ultimately, you are only left with one option, which is to carry a vegan snack with you every time you step out.

Too much soy protein

Studies have shown that eating large quantities of soy protein can increase estrogen levels. High levels of estrogen have been linked to some types of breast cancer. Some breast cancer cells have receptors that attach to estrogen and helps the cell grow at a faster rate. Doctors will often recommend that the patient stop eating soy protein all together, and start taking an estrogen blocking drug.

Posted by: Brandon AT 07:34 am   |  Permalink   |  Email